pen and what has happened? I am well and strong and still the same and in the same place. No, it can't be! Surely it will all end in nothing!”
He was flushed and bathed in perspiration, though the room was not hot. His face was terrible and piteous to see, especially from its helpless efforts to seem calm.
The score against him reached the fateful sum of forty-three thousand. Rostóv had just prepared a card, by bending the corner of which he meant to double the three thousand just put down to his score, when Dólokhov, slamming down the pack of cards, put it aside and began rapidly adding up the total of Rostóv's debt, breaking the chalk as he marked the figures in his clear, bold hand.
“Supper, it's time for supper! And here are the gypsies!”
Some swarthy men and women were really entering from the cold outside and saying something in their gypsy accents. Nicholas understood that it was all over; but he said in an indifferent tone:
“Well, won't you go on? I had a splendid card all ready,” as if it were the fun of the game which interested him most.
“It's all up! I'm lost!” thought he. “Now a bullet through my brain—that's all that's left me!” And at the same time he said in a cheerful voice:
“Come now, just this one more little card!”
“All right!” said Dólokhov, having finished the addition. “All right! Twenty-one rubles,” he said, pointing to the figure twenty-one by which the total exceeded the round sum of forty-three thousand; and taking up a pack he prepared to deal. Rostóv submissively unbent the corner of his card and, instead of the six thousand he had intended, carefully wrote twenty-one.
“It's all the same to me,” he said. “I only want to see whether you will let me win this ten, or beat it.”
Dólokhov began to deal seriously. Oh, how Rostóv detested at that moment those hands with their short reddish fingers and hairy wrists, which held him in their power. . . The ten fell to him.
“You owe forty-three thousand, Count,” said Dólokhov, and stretching himself he rose from the table. “One does get tired sitting so long,” he added.
“Yes, I'm tired too,” said Rostóv.
Dólokhov cut him short, as if to remind him that it was not for him to jest.
“When am I to receive the money, Count?”
Rostóv, flushing, drew Dólokhov into the next room.
“I cannot pay it all immediately. Will you take an I.O.U.?” he said.
“I say, Rostóv,” said Dólokhov clearly, smiling and looking Nicholas straight in the eyes, “you know the saying, 'Lucky in love, unlucky at cards.' Your cousin is in love with you, I know.”
“Oh, it's terrible to feel oneself so in this man's power,” thought Rostóv. He knew what a shock he would inflict on his father and mother by the news of this loss, he knew what a relief it would be to escape it all, and felt that Dólokhov knew that he could save him from all this shame and sorrow, but wanted now to play with him as a cat does with a mouse.
“Your cousin. . .” Dólokhov started to say, but Nicholas interrupted him.
“My cousin has nothing to do with this and it's not necessary to mention her!” he exclaimed fiercely.
“Then when am I to have it?”
“Tomorrow,” replied Rostóv and left the room.
CHAPTER XV
To say “tomorrow” and keep up a dignified tone was not difficult, but to go home alone, see his sisters, brother, mother, and father, confess and ask for money he had no right to after giving his word of honor, was terrible.
At home, they had not yet gone to bed. The young people, after returning from the theater, had had supper and were grouped round the clavichord. As soon as Nicholas entered, he was enfolded in that poetic atmosphere of love which pervaded the Rostóv household that winter and, now after Dólokhov's proposal and Iogel's ball, seemed to have grown thicker round Sónya and Natásha as the air does before a thunderstorm. Sónya and Natásha, in the light-blue dresses they had worn at the theater, looking pretty and conscious of it, were standing by the clavichord, happy and smiling. Véra was playing chess with Shinshín in the drawing room. The old countess, waiting for the return of her husband and son, sat playing patience with the old gentlewoman who lived in their house. Denísov, with sparkling eyes and ruffled hair, sat at the clavichord striking chords with his short fingers, his legs thrown back and his eyes rolling as he sang, with his small, husky, but true voice, some
